I add even if not directly related. Still important I think especially when it comes to the supply chain law.
"...
Furthermore, the administrator highlights the Chinese company Putailai, which has been in bad weather recently as the company is to build a factory for Northvolt in Torsboda outside Timrå. According to information, Putailai has deliberately concealed the fact that it has a subsidiary in a region of China where a genocide is taking place, which is why, among other things, the United States has banned all trade in Chinese goods from the region.
The manager instead highlights a number of companies in the portfolio that produce the same type of battery material, but which are instead based on natural graphite, which creates much less carbon dioxide emissions. These companies are Nextsource Materials, Northern Graphite, Noveau Monde Graphite and Talga.
..."
https://thestockexchange.com.au/threads/tlg-discussion-2022.7072/post-307058
"Putailai's factory in Xinjiang is located in Huyanghe, in the far north-west of China, where it is most difficult to conduct investigations into supply chains or the region's widespread slave labor among ethnic minorities. (Image: screenshot Google Maps)
Chinese investors in Timrå have a hidden large factory in Xinjiang
Why does the large Chinese company Putailai, which is to
invest in a battery factory Torsboda outside Timrå, hide the fact that they have a subsidiary in the region of Xinjiang in western China?
As everyone knows, a genocide is taking place in Xinjiang, or East Turkestan, as the region is also called.
In addition to the gigantic indoctrination camps, the
systematic mass sterilizations of Uyghur women, and the forcible detention of hundreds of thousands of Uyghur children who are now being raised as model citizens of the Party, there is also widespread exploitation of forced labor of ethnic minorities who are able to work. (Which is reminiscent of the Nazis, who during their genocide were also very keen on forced labor from able-bodied Jews.)
Forced labor is evidently used in
a whole range of industries in Xinjiang, where Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities work: in
cotton picking , in
the textile industry , to
make floors , to make
solar panels , and not least in
the car industry through the production of everything from glass and steel to tires and batteries .
This is the second wave of profitable genocidal industry in Xinjiang, after the first round of surveillance, prison building, torture devices and so on.
Western and Swedish companies often want to appear as if they do not contribute to exploitation. But then you must have the capacity for due diligence, i.e. being able to fully trace your supply chains.
This was difficult in China even before the genocide began in 2017, but it has now become
impossible : the Chinese authorities mislead and block all such investigations. Therefore, the US's new law,
the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act , has banned all Chinese goods originating from the region of Xinjiang.
The EU's
corresponding law is not yet complete, but seems to be stuck on precisely this point on how to verify the absence of slavery. China will, of course, as usual, continue to deny everything, and block journalists to hide the truth as far as possible.
For Chinese companies, which are, after all, under the command of the state and the party, it is different: Those who are talented are happy to invest in Xinjiang and become involved in the exploitation of China's colony. (Even performers
are forced to stand on stage and praise cotton from Xinjiang, swearing never to shop at H&M and other companies, which for good reason
have renounced Xinjiang cotton.)
But then we have the small headache that markets and consumers in the free world often continue to argue about small things like slave labor and genocide. What to do?
Double-entry bookkeeping is a solution. Companies like Putailai avoid talking about their operations in Xinjiang. Especially when you have to toast without problems, in champagne, with happy Swedes at a press conference in Timrå. It could become sock in the cup if the connection to Xinjiang became known.
Therefore, Putailai's website or other easily accessible documents lack any information about the subsidiary Xinjiang Zichen Tianshan New Material Technology Co., Ltd. (新疆紫宸天山新结果电影电影) which will be responsible for a major expansion of the parent company's production of anode material for lithium-ion batteries: one hundred thousand tons annually, as well as the same number of tons of anode graphitization material.
Materialet ska komma från en fabrik i Xinjiang, närmare bestämt på adressen Industrial Avenue 18-168, Huyanghe City (No. 18-168 Industrial Avenue, Management Committee, Huyanghe Economic and Technological Development Zone, Huyanghe City, Xinjiang), där man står under uppsikt av sjunde divisionen från Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), den statliga paramilitära organization som lett koloniseringen av Xinjiang.
One of XPCC's many "service stations" in Xinjiang. (Image: Charlie Qi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
According to the Qichacha database, the contact person for the company even has an email address that ends in "@putailai.com", but the parent company does not even include it on its map of its factories. So Torsboda comes along, but not Huyanghe! How then should the production be accounted for? How many Uyghur slave workers will you have in the factories? Should their output be shipped to Timrå?
May Swedish journalists come there... Well, right?
The secrecy and cover-up fit right into the usual pattern. When a company is revealed to be directly involved in slave labor, it can suddenly pretend to be called something else so that the different entities cannot be connected.
Or you "sell" the companies on a pretense, and rename them, so that rowdy foreigners can't get anything out at all. The same goes for necessary raw materials: just try to figure out the supply chains for the graphite, lithium, aluminum, copper, nickel, or manganese that Putailai needs.
As party leader Xi Jinping usually says: "Little people must not be told everything". Sweden now becomes a naive but capable little cog in the dictatorship's machinery.
Torsboda fits nicely into China's long-term strategy, which remains the same: the goal is world dominance, which starts with securing control over resources, industries, infrastructure and markets.
They want to create relationships of dependence, not least via the green industries of the future.
The Chinese media , but also publications such as the New York Times, have described in detail China's advanced plans for a world monopoly over the batteries and electric cars of the future.
Should we toast that - and because Swedish industry, through collaboration with slave drivers, helps the dictatorship in Beijing fulfill its ambitions?"
https://kinamedia.se/2023/06/01/kinesiska-investerare-i-timra-har-undangomd-storfabrik-i-xinjiang/
______________
Perhaps you can now understand why my image of
Northvolt has changed considerably with this decision.
Of course, everything is very green and sustainable and socially acceptable if you just look the other way. It seems that NV has given in to greed in this matter. But it also seems that they can't get away with it.
I assume that NV did not discuss this with the USA at the last trade summit in Lulea. But good journalism never sleeps. NV, be glad about that! Imagine you make the greenest and most sustainable batteries in the world and everything is going well and then this comes to light.
